“The struggle ends when the gratitude begins.” – Neale Donald Walsch
“There is no way to happiness – happiness is the way.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
“What you seek is seeking you.” – Rumi
BJ MILLER
“DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING THAT YOU THINK.”
“When you are struggling with just about anything, look up. Just ponder the night sky for a minute and realize that we’re all on the same planet at the same time.”
THE POWER OF BEARING WITNESS AND LISTENING
“But I think most of the power of the visit is just visiting, just being together and sharing this awkward body.”
TF: Since chatting with BJ, I’ve noticed how this applies in many areas. To “fix” someone’s problem, you very often just need to empathically listen to them.
MARIA POPOVA
“Ours is a culture where we wear our ability to get by on very little sleep as a kind of badge of honor that symbolizes work ethic, or toughness, or some other virtue – but really, it’s a total profound failure of priorities and of self-respect.”
What is the worst advice you see or hear given in your trade or area of expertise?
“’Follow your dreams.’ it’s impossible to do without self-knowledge, which takes years. You discover your ‘dream’ (or sense of purpose) in the very act of walking the path, which is guided by equal parts choice and chance.”
JOCKO WILLINK
DISCIPLINE EQUALS FREEDOM
To “what would you put on a billboard?”…
TF: Jocko adds “It also means that if you want freedom in life – be that financial freedom, more free time, or even freedom from sickness and poor health – you can only achieve these things through discipline.”
“TWO IS ONE AND ONE IS NONE.”
One of my favorite Franz Kafka quotes is related: “Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have.”
EXPOSING YOURSELF TO DARKNESS TO SEE THE LIGHT
“I think that in order to truly experience the light and the bright, you have to see the darkness. I think if you shield yourself from the darkness, you’ll not appreciate – and fully understand – the beauty of life.”
“TAKE EXTREME OWNERSHIP OF YOUR WORLD”
ON THE IMPORTANCE OF DETACHMENT
“I realized that detaching yourself from the situation, so you can see what’s happening, is absolutely critical.”
“It sounds horrible, but it’s almost like, sometimes, I’m not a participant in my own life. I’m an observer of that guy who’s doing it. So, if I’m having a conversation with you and we’re trying to discuss a point, I’m watching and saying (to myself) ‘Wait, am I being too emotional right now?’”
SEBATIAN JUNGER
“HOW DO YOU BECOME A MAN IN A WORLD THAT DOESN’T REQUIRE COURAGE?”
“If you don’t give young men a good and useful group to belong to, they will create a bad group to belong to.”
THE CALMING EFFECT OF ACTING INSTEAD OF WAITING
“The reason their cortisol levels dropped was because it was stressful for them to wait for the unknown, but as soon as they knew they were going to be attacked, they had a plan of action.”
HIS MESSAGE AT A HIGH SCHOOL COMMENCEMENT
“You have to do the hardest thing that you have not been prepared for in this school or any school: You have to be prepared to fail. That’s how you’re going to expand yourself and grow. As you work through that process of failure and learning, you will really deepen into the human being you’re capable of being.”
WHAT WOULD YOU DIE FOR?
“… and when you lose the ready answer to those ancient human questions, you lose a part of yourself.”
“Who would you die for? What ideas would you die for? The answer to those questions, for most of human history, would have come very readily to any person’s mouth.”
GENERAL STANLEY McCHRYSTAL & CHRIS FUSSEL
“THE PURPOSE OF LIFE IS A LIFE OF PURPOSE.”
This is Stan’s answer to “If you could put a billboard anywhere and write anything on it, what would it say?” It is a quote from Robert Bryne.
ADVICE TO YOUR 30-YEAR-OLD SELF?
“The advice I’d give to anyone young is it’s really about developing people who are going to do the work.”
SHAY CARL
“THE SECRETS TO LIFE ARE HIDDEN BEHIND THE WORD ‘CLICHÉ’.”
“So anytime you hear something that you think is a cliché, my tip to you is to perk your ears up and listen more carefully.”
LEARNING FROM YOUR FUTURE SELF – AN EXERCISE WE BOTH USE
“Think about how old you are right now and think about being a 10-year-older version of yourself. Then think ‘What would I probably tell myself as an older version of myself?’ That is the wisdom that I think you found in that exercise.... (If you do this exercise and then start living the answers), I think you’re going to grow exponentially faster than you would have otherwise.”
WORK WILL WORK WHEN NOTHING ELSE WILL WORK
Who comes to mind when you hear the word “successful”?
“To me, the definition of success is being cool with your parents, your grandparents (if still alive) and your kids. Being able to navigate the difficult task of dealing with each other as human beings.”
“What would you put on a billboard?
“’YOU ARE GOING TO DIE!’” (TF: CAPS are his.) Shay constantly reminds himself of the shortness of life and inevitability of death.
WILL MACASKILL
Advice to your 20-year-old self?
“An analogy I use is, if you’re going out for dinner, it’s going to take you a couple of hours. You spend 5 minutes working out where to go for dinner. It seems reasonable to spend 5% of your time on how to spend the remaining 95%. If you did that with your career, that would be 4,000 hours, or 2 working years. And actually, I think that’s a pretty legitimate thing to do – spending that length of time trying to work out how should you be spending the rest of your life.”
THE DICKENS PROCESS – WHAT ARE YOUR BELIEFS COSTING YOU?
In the Dickens Process, you’re forced to examine limiting beliefs – say, your top two or three handicapping beliefs – across each tense. Tony guides you through each in depth and I recall answering and visualizing variations of:
T. Robbins - “When we feel pain in one time zone – meaning past, present, or future – we just switch to another time zone rather than change, because change brings so much uncertainty and so much instability and so much fear to people.”
After you feel the acute pain of your current handicapping beliefs, you formulate 2 to 3 replacement beliefs to use moving forward.
Now, I’m well aware how cheesy this all might sound on paper. Nonetheless, I experienced a huge phase shift in my life in the subsequent 3 to 4 weeks.
Novembro, 2020